Yup. Inauguration day was Day One of the coup d'etat. This administration has absolutely no intention of observing the Constitution. And the GOP is completely aligned with that. I hope the ghosts in the White House haunt them all. Beaglemom

O/T So basically they got around the senate confirmation by calling him an “attendee” and member of a committee that has no guidelines for members. Wonder how other legal experts interpret this memo and why did they make it public if it is true the president can invite anyone they want to the meetings?=================================A legal expert told us the law does not require Bannon to be confirmed by the Senate to sit on the National Security Council Principals committee.

Origin:On 30 January 2017, PalmerReport.com published a story that said President Donald Trump could not place his top strategist, Steve Bannon, on the National Security Council Principals committee without a Senate confirmation hearing......

While the law lays out the National Security Council's structure, it does not dictate who is in the Principals committee, and in fact it doesn't mentioned the committee at all. The NSC was formed in 1947 (described as a "Cabinet-level group of agencies focused on national security) while the Principals committee was established by President George H. W. Bush in 1989. Traditionally the committee has been apolitical, consisting of members who are senior military and intelligence personnel:

......Professor Larry Tribe said there is no reason to believe Bannon needs to go before the Senate.Tribe told us in an e-mail:

[N]othing in the Constitution or in any Act of Congress makes membership in what has been called the Principals Committee, which is formally and structurally not part of the National Security Council but an advisory group hitched to the Council by an invisible cord, a position that mandates the Senate’s advice and consent.

President Trump's memorandum both adds Bannon (the chief strategist) to the Principals committee and designates him an invitee to any NSC meeting:.....

Jordan Brunner notes in LawFareBlog that the wording is important in determining whether Bannon needs a Senate confirmation hearing or not:

But Bannon isn’t on the NSC; as mentioned above, he is merely an “invitee.”

Considering the control Bannon apparently wields, that may seem like a distinction without a difference, but the President is allowed to “invite” anyone he wants to attend NSC meetings—there is no requirement that these “invitees” be confirmed.

Bannon’s other role is more formal. He is a “regular attendee” of the Principals Committee. The Principals Committee is the “Cabinet-level interagency forum for considering policy issues that affect national security.” But nothing in the National Security Act dictates who sits on the Principals Committee...

Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump will not head to Milwaukee for a previously scheduled visit of a Harley-Davidson factory after the company decided it wasn't comfortable hosting him amid planned protests, an administration official said Tuesday.

Trump had been scheduled to tour the factory Thursday where he also planned to sign executive orders related to American manufacturing....

Eight years of doing nothing and all of a sudden the republicans have become busy little critters.========================

Republicans are using an obscure law to kill a few of Obama’s big environmental rules

On Wednesday, Republicans in Congress will get started dismantling President Barack Obama’s environmental legacy — deploying a rarely used tactic to overturn two big federal regulations around coal mining and methane leaks (as well as three other rules).

The background here is that it will be tricky and time-consuming for the Trump administration to rewrite many Obama-era regulations all by itself. But Congress can easily wipe out a subset of Obama’s agency rules using the 1996 Congressional Review Act, which allows the House and Senate to kill any recently finalized federal regulation by a simple majority vote in both chambers — so long as the president agrees.

What counts as “recently finalized” here gets complicated, but Congress can basically use the CRA to repeal any rule finished by Obama after mid-June 2016 — a list that spans more than 50 major regulations. This week, the GOP will focus on nullifying two big environmental rules plus three others:......

Today NOAA put out a statement about the abysmal state of Arctic ice this year - the lowest since anyone started keeping records - in 1978. Those statements and others that are important to the future of the country and the planet will be suppressed shortly. We, the people, no longer count. In Trumpland we are nonexistent.Beaglemom

drumpf>'Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. That’s power,” he told the Hollywood Reporter in November, embracing the comparisons of him to those figures.In the same interview, Bannon compared himself to a powerful aide to England’s Henry VIII — an aide who helped engineer a world-shaking move of his era, the split of the Church of England from the Catholic Church.“I am Thomas Cromwell in the court of the Tudors,” Bannon told the Hollywood reporter."

About Me

This blog is dedicated to finding the truth, exposing the lies, and holding our politicians and leaders accountable when they fall far short of the promises that they have made to both my fellow Alaskans and the American people.